Professor Paul Allan David
Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford
Virtual communities of practice: the open source software community
Paul David directed a major international networked project on the ‘free / libre / open source’ approach to software development, virtual communities and the broader implications of ‘the “open source” way of working’.
This developed and applied new automated data extraction techniques, quantitative methods of analysis, and empirical findings about the organisation, governance and performance of the large Internet-connected communities that develop free and open source software, such as the Linux kernel, the Mozilla browser and the Apache Webserver. It was undertaken by teams at Stanford University and partner institutions in the UK, France and the Netherlands.
Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford